The King is Dead

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

The most recent session was played after a trip to the wineries of the Texas Hill Country, so the whole gang wasn't there because the whole gang doesn't drink. I feel slightly bad about this. The player characters in attendance were Nana, Elias, Silas, the Mad Arab, and my GM PC Kit Rackham. Kit sat out most of the action (as a good GM PC ought to) so I won't bother to mention him any more.

The crew learned last time that the evil snake man they had brought to Tortuga had corrupted the pirate brotherhood by tempting them into worshiping the vile serpent god Set (herein played pretty explicitly as Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age Set and not the real-world Egyptian god). Captain Blackheart had declared himself king of the pirates, Ben Franklin clone Richard Poore had built himself a big Frankenstein-looking tower, and the majority of the pirates had joined the cult. The crews' anarcho-syndicalist commune sugarcane plantation was safe, but there was a lot of pressure to join the Scientologists Setities.

(It turns out that classical mythology records an enmity between the crew's patron Dionysus and the real-world Set due the Greeks equating Set with the Titan Typhon -- Dionysus' occasional murderer. Absent PCs Commodore Wendy and Johnny McSliceathroat were dispatched to Neverland to get Dionysus' aid.)

The players were convinced they had to be extra-sneaky and reconnoiter the tower, so they bought out one of the brothels near the tower, set up an escape route to the port, and had their ships standing by to bombard the town if needed. And then they accepted the invitation of Setite missionaries to go to the next midnight mass. Whatever...

The unholy ceremony was held inside Poore's tower. A braided copper wire hung down from the tower's upper reaches all the way into a hole in the ground floor and into the depths of the earth. When a cloaked figure with Poore's face -- but not his voice -- took the stage to preach, an electric current began to run down the wire, causing it to jump and sway. The sinister figure began to preach the word of Set, encouraging the pirates to avenge themselves on the upper classes and start a crusade to conquer the Caribbean. To be honest, what the sinister figure preached wasn't so terrible, but it became apparent pretty quickly that he was just telling the pirates what they wanted to hear in order to open their minds to Set's psychic influence.

The sermon was actually a summoning ritual, and the copper wire unbraided to open a portal into the outer darkness. One of the heads of Set poked through as a black nightmare figure of eldritch energy -- and Nana finally got the hint that this multi-headed serpent god was the same damned thing as the Orochi her personal god Susanoo battled in Japan's mythological past, so she spilled some sake on her blade and jumped into battle. Meanwhile, the Mad Arab dashed up the stairs of the tower to confront a leather-masked figure (the now-faceless Richard Poore) and blow up the machine with a few grenadoes. Elias shot the snake-man wearing Poore's face (and the Hag of Tortuga who died shouting "I'll swallow your soul!"), Silas helped Nana, the sanctified blade and grenadoes did their work, and Set was banished back to his dark dimension... after devouring a bunch of the cultists.

But Blackheart wasn't ready to give up his title, so he drew his cutlass and challenged Nana, Silas, and Elias at once. Nana aced her first first attack and cut off his head with one swipe -- which means that four out of seven of the "Legends of the Spanish Main" from the PotSM rulebook are now dead. Calico Cat and Jack Hawkins were killed off-screen by serpent men, and Blackheart and Governor Lynch were killed in fights with PCs. This also means that if Blackheart was acknowledged as king by the pirates of Tortuga, then logically Nana can claim the title of queen.

Depending on player preferences, the next game will either be a siege of the snake-men stronghold in the Caymans or a return to straightforward piracy. I'm inclined to have Dionysus visit his divine wrath on the Setites and get back to more realistic adventures, but I'll leave it to the players.

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